


Damage Control

by gondalsqueen



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: F/M, Missing Scene, Space family, The Force, graphic depictions of injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-01
Updated: 2016-02-01
Packaged: 2018-05-17 14:18:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5873773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gondalsqueen/pseuds/gondalsqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hera's out there in the void, smashed up, maybe dead. "Hurry!" Sabine says. So Kanan does. </p><p>A missing scene from "The Protector of Concord Dawn."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Damage Control

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warnings for some awfully graphic depictions of injury and its aftermath.

Kanan’s heart started beating again when her A-wing jumped into view. Then it collapsed in his chest.

The angle was wrong. Back end drifting up towards him, no running lights, adrift. Nobody piloting.

She didn’t answer.

And Sabine’s voice, controlled but too shrill. “I see her, Kanan, it’s BAD.” He could sense her fear, focused as a drill out there, drowning out anything he might feel from Hera. “You’ve got to hurry. Please hurry!”

The bridge, the fighters, the galaxy sharpened into crisis mode. Push those fears aside and control the damage.

“Scramble cruisers,” Sato barked, and it was Ezra who told him no, because Kanan had already reached far out with the Force to see what he could do.

Terror beckoned, close and easy. But terror couldn’t help him be gentle. He reached beyond that, quieting his mind.  _Please_ , he asked simply, a request to a power he knew couldn’t hear and never answered.  _I can’t do this by myself. Help me. Please._

Sabine sat out there close to Hera, her presence sharp with impatience and panic, bright as a lamp. Find a connection to that light and hold it. Behind him, Zeb willed himself into calm and Chopper willed himself into fury, ready to push everyone around them into action. He built himself a web of support from their nearness. Anchored like this, he couldn’t stumble. Ezra sensed what he was doing and opened himself up to the Force without reservation, scared but ready to give whatever Kanan needed.

And in the void of space, a ship wasn’t so heavy. Especially a ship already drifting towards them. He cradled it loose-fingered and drew Hera gently towards the hangar.

What were they looking at? Worst case scenario first, then the next worst. He’d be prepared for anything that way. Death. Barring that, hypoxia—she might hang on for a few days, but severe lack of oxygen meant certain death, too. Brain injury. It might kill her or it might not, but he could potentially lose his Hera all the same. Systemic injury, next—something so severe they couldn’t patch her back together. Anything else was small ale. Anything else would be fine.

He sat the ship down as if it were made of spun glass and narrowed his focus, holding Hera’s body perfectly still so the ship’s gravity couldn’t injure her any further.

Death.

Hypoxia.

Brain injury.

Systemic injury.

Medical droids swarmed the ship like mynocks. Kanan caught something about equalizing the pressure before they could pop the cockpit open. And ohhhhhhh Force. It had cracked. Even under the weight of the ship’s atmosphere the thing was holding, but she’d ridden through hyperspace with a cracked cockpit cover.

Sabine brought her ship in sloppily. Moonbeam’s dome popped open with a loud smack—she must have had some air left. Thick blood peeked out from under her helmet where it had started to run down her face and then frozen in place. He couldn’t tell the extent of her injuries, or even  _what_  they were.

But he could feel her now, alive in the Force. Her signature wasn’t dark, wasn’t cold, wasn’t out. He could still see that steady glow, now muted and hidden deep inside her body. He didn’t reach out for her and meet despair. Hera was still THERE.

He concentrated on holding her very, very gently and very, very still.  _Stay the same_  he thought at her.  _Just hold on exactly like that and they’ll help you._

“Hera?” Sabine’s voice was a shriek. “Hera!”

“Stay back and let them work,” Kanan told her.

“I  _know_  that. I’m not an  _idiot_.”

He took mercy on Sabine, who had also run a gauntlet. “She’s not dead.”

But there was some kind of hold-up. The droids hadn’t moved her and seemed to be debating something.

“Ezra?”

The boy climbed carefully up, then froze. “Kanan. She.”

“What?”

“The steering bar’s blown off and the drive shaft is sticking through her middle. All the way through, Kanan.”

Everything went cold.  _No_ , he thought at the world.  _Stay warm_.

“They can’t take it out until she’s in surgery, so we’re waiting on a droid that can slice the metal.”

“Ezra. Do it.”

His padawan’s lightsaber flashed blue, and then they were moving, Sabine at Hera’s side, Zeb forcibly clearing the hall on the way to the medical bay, Hera hooked to a dozen wires and tubes that would keep her alive for the short trip down the corridors, Kanan still cradling her in a pocket of warm air, protecting her from the weight of her own body.

She looked awful, brown and red blossoming everywhere he could see, but she hadn’t bled out. Oh. She hadn’t bled out because the blood she DID lose had quickly frozen into makeshift scabs. The cracked cockpit dome had saved her. He lowered the temperature around her without even thinking about how he would manage to do it.

“What happened out there?” Zeb was asking Sabine, hand covering her shoulder.

The door to the medical bay loomed and the medical droids chirruped back and forth in binary, too fast for Kanan to decipher. Chopper did it for him—they didn’t think they could remove the drive shaft without her bleeding to death. They expected her to die on the table.  

Systemic injury. “I can take care of that,” Kanan told them. He was already holding her perfectly still, preventing any change for the worse. This wasn’t even advanced healing—just delicate work with a Force hold. “I can keep her from bleeding out.”

The droids wasted no time. They cut away her flight suit and helmet before they got to the operating area, and Kanan moved to block her from the rest of the crew, not because of modesty, but because it was so much worse than he could have imagined.

Systemic injury—check. Brain injury—likely from the looks of it. Hypoxia—possible. Probable. Death—No. He held her still and kept her cold. The doors of the operating room whooshed shut behind him.


End file.
